A New Day Rising (3 page)

By the time he returned to camp, he was no longer calling himself every kind of fool. His legs had cramped and forced him to stop more than once to stretch them out, but his breathing had returned to normal. No one could see the sweat still soaking his long johns. He looked like a man who'd been out for a Sunday stroll, but for the set of his jaw and the ice in his eyes.

It was his own fault, he knew, which didn't make it any easier. If only he'd spoken earlier ...

The coming nuptials were the talk of the camp. One logger began collecting donations from each of the men so they could buy a present or give the newlyweds the money. Heaven only knew that preachers didn't make much. Haakan tossed in a dollar.

The night they left he won every hand at the poker table. No one dared argue with him.

By the end of the week, he had all but put Mrs. Mary Landsverk and the wedding out of his mind. Or so he thought. When the new cook-a man who closely resembled a potbellied stove-drove up with the supply sledge, Haakan said not a word. But then the few he'd uttered all week didn't equal the fingers of one hand.

Life in the logging camp continued at the same steady pace. A blizzard kept everyone confined to camp for three days, and by the end of the third, Haakan had ignored three bloody fights.

"What's with you, man?" the foreman asked.

"Nothing, why?" Haakan cocked one eyebrow.

"I counted on you to keep order around here. Now I got one man with a broken arm and to other with cracked ribs. They was kickin' the life out of him, and you sat back and did nothin'."

Haakan crossed his arms across his chest. "I wasn't hired to be peacemaker." He didn't add, And if you'd been sober instead of drunk on your bunk, you could have broken up the fights yourself. But he must have thought it plenty loud because the foreman glowered back at him.

"The men respect you."

Ilia.,,

The foreman slammed his hands on the desk. "Don't expect no favors from me when it comes time to hire at the mill. You know they go on my say-so."

Haakan felt his muscles tense. Grabbing the man by the checkered shirt front and slamming him against the wall would only relieve the anger burning in his belly for now. It wouldn't solve anything. He'd come so close to joining in the brawl last night, he'd had to leave the bunkhouse.

In spite of his best efforts, thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk, now Mrs. Jorge, tormented him night and day. He hadn't realized he loved her this much or had so counted on her going west with him in the spring. If he'd had the sense of a mosquito, he'd have spoken sooner.

One day toward the end of March, he heard his name called above the din of men eating. Another letter. He rose to get the paper square and returned to his place on the bench. Two letters so close together. What could have happened at home?

He slit the envelope carefully and drew out the paper. Perusing it quickly, his heart sank. His mother sent another request for him to help save the widows. Surely there were plenty of men in Dakota Territory who wouldn't mind meeting up with a widow woman and working her land for her. He shook his head. It wasn't for him. He liked the logging life, and lumbering liked him.

Two days later, he woke up prone and found himself being hauled back to camp in the middle of the afternoon on the sledge.

"What happened?" He could hardly speak around the vise that held his head in a grip that continued to tighten.

"You was struck by a widow-maker." The driver spit a blob of tobacco into the snowbank. "You was lucky. Two inches closer and you wouldn't know nothing ever again."

Haakan gritted his teeth against the movements of the sledge, each one cranking on the vise handle, intensifying the pain. "Swede?"

"Just scratched up some. He had a sense of it and drove you forward with his shoulder. I seen it. That one was close."

Haakan lifted his hand to his head and drew it away covered in blood.

"Not to worry. That cookie, he'll stitch you up good as new. You Norwegians got good hard heads."

Four men hauled Haakan off the sledge and carried him into the cookshack to lay him on one of the ten-foot tables. He closed his eyes against the agony, stemming the nausea rising in his throat.

"Easy, son, you'll be good as new when I'm done with you." Cookie pressed around the gash with gentle fingers. "Don't seem to be nothing broken, fer as I can tell. 'Course a crack in that solid skull of your'n could cause plenty problems too. Seen men go blind and deef after something like this."

Haakan clamped his hands around the edge of the table. "Just get on with it."

"Better go get the whiskey. This sure do call for it." The grizzled man's fingers continued their probing. When the driver arrived back from the kitchen with the amber-filled bottle, the cook took a slug himself and then poured some into the wound. The fire burning Haakan's head jackknifed him near upright.

He finally opened his eyes again to see Cookie waving the bottle in front of him.

"Drink up."

He'd never tried drinking lying flat on his back.

"Here, let me help." The driver worked his arm under Haakan's shoulders and lifted him carefully. With his other hand he propped the bottle at the injured man's lips. "Drink quick."

Haakan started to refuse, but when the cook ordered him to drink, he did. The liquid burned like wildfire clear to his gullet. He took a few more swallows, doing his best not to cough at the heat. It wasn't that he had never drunk, but nursing a drink through an evening of cards and chugging it down were two different things. He'd never seen any sense in being pie-eyed and sicker'n a dog the next day.

Right now he didn't care. He'd do anything to dull the vicious pain squeezing his head.

He passed out about the third stitch. From then on he would have a permanent part on the right side of his head. It wasn't perfectly straight, but then cracked heads rarely are. He woke up two days later to see Cookie peering into his eyes.

"Hey, son, dat's good." Cookie leaned back in the chair he'd pulled up to the lower bunk where they'd made the injured man comfortable. "You gonna feel right better soon. I ain't never lost a man I stitched up. Know your name?"

Haakan closed his eyes against the dancing firelight. Someone must have left the door open on the stove. His name? Of course he knew his name. Nothing came to mind, however.

"I see. Know where you're at?"

Haakan looked at the rough-sawn boards overhead, the patchwork quilt covering his body. Moving his head set the anvil to pounding again. He closed his eyes and let the questions lie.

When he woke again, he remembered everything. His name, the logging camp, and the swoosh of a falling widow-maker. That branch had done it's best to kill him, but here he was.

Sleeping, waking, and finally clear headed, he found thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk always drifting through. He should have made his intentions known sooner, before that Reverend Jorge had found her.

It took two weeks before he could rejoin his crew, and by then, much of the snow had melted in the first of the spring thaws.

"So, what you gonna do next?" Swede asked one day. "They already chose up the men to go work the mills. Didn't see your name on the list."

"I know." Haakan thought back to the scene with the foreman that night weeks ago. The man had a long memory. He rubbed at the scar on his head that glowed pink in the sunlight. "I think I'm heading west. I got some relatives who be needing a hand in Dakota Territory, and after I get them straight, I'll keep on going. I heard there's some mighty big trees in Oregon Territory and an ocean with fjords beside. What about you?"

Their axes continued the rhythm of branch-stripping as they talked.

"Ah, you know that neighbor to the west of the dairy farm where I worked the last two summers?"

"Ja."

"Well, she be needing some help, too. I'm tinkin' I might stay on there, if she needs me, a' course."

"Just don't waste too much time before you ask her." Haakan swung and cut clear through a six-inch branch. He pushed it to the side with his axhead. "If you care for her, just ask her right out."

"M-marryin', ya mean?" Swede stuttered over the words.

"If that's what you want."

"Ja, ja. That it is." Swede leaned his ax against a branch and wiped his forehead with a faded red bandanna. "I tink I may like felling trees better, you know?"

The two men looked at each other and shook their heads. Their laughter rang high, accompanied by the sharp ring of ax on wood.

Early one morning a few days later, Swede joined the men on the final wagon going to town. "You find your land, you write to me, ya hear?" he called as the driver slapped the reins on the backs of the two teams. "You know what town I be near."

"Ja, I will." Haakan waved a last time at the hooting and hollering men. Should I be with them? He shook his head and bent down to pick up his pack. It contained all his worldly goods, a knife, cooking pot, cup and small utensils, a change of clothes, extra socks, the Bible his mor insisted he take, fishing line and hooks, flint and tinder, and some food he'd begged from the kitchen. He'd topped it all with a quilt and a blanket all wrapped in a tarp he bought off the owner of the lumbering outfit. He shoved his arms into the ropes he'd fashioned, and with his ax firmly anchored to his belt, he started walking west.

A hundred paces or so up the drag road he turned and looked back. Shutters covered the windows. The buildings were all set on logs carved with up-turned ends to make pulling them easier. Soon teams would hitch up and drag the camp farther north to where prime trees still blotted out the sun. Would he make it in the west, or would he be back here again next fall just before snow-fly and asking for his job back? Or, just as they had hammered shut the doors of the buildings, was he slamming shut a time of his life?

"Widows Bjorklund, here I come. If I can find you."

The morning sun shone over his shoulder, casting his shadow ahead of him and leading the way to the western territories.

kiing would certainly have been an easier mode of travel if he'd started west earlier in the season. ♦• , , C. „ , f f „

Haakan paused after crossing a swollen stream by way of a fallen log. Bridges like that were few and far between. He dug in his pocket for his last biscuit, hard as one of the pine trees he'd felled, and dunked it in the tin cup he'd filled with ice-cold water from a clean trickle. Starting a fire took too much time, and where would he find dry wood, anyway? While a couple of times he'd found a farm where he could sleep in the barn, most nights he'd spent wrapped in his quilt in the tarp.

Sometimes cold, often wet, he'd fought to keep the thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk at bay. What was the matter with him that he let her leaving bother him so? He called himself all kinds of fool and a few other names as well, but the memory of her smile kept coming back, especially in his dreams.

One night, howling wolves forced him to make his bed in the crook of a towering maple tree. He was so tired he tied himself in and slept anyway. Whatever had possessed him to start on this fool journey before summer, or at least spring, was well established?